Sketches
by Writings of Stardust
Summary: McKenna always knew Neal was a hell of an artist, but it had somehow never occurred to her that he might have a sketchbook. Part of the Lie a Little Better series.
1. Chapter 1

**_Sketches - Muse_**

 **Summary: McKenna always knew Neal was a hell of an artist, but it had somehow never occurred to her that he might have a sketchbook.**

 **Timeframe: Set between chapters twenty and twenty-one of "Lie a Little Better."**

No ringing phone, no alarm clock, no fire alarm, no screaming, no pain. Life was good. There was just one problem – I was about to become a human icicle, especially my feet, which were sticking out the end of the blanket for some reason. I shivered and rolled my shoulders in preparation of shifting around to pull my legs up under the covers.

"Stay still," Neal's voice quickly stopped me, coming from a few feet away and on the side of the bed towards the skylight.

I tensed, but other than that, I didn't move an inch. Working in the bureau taught me that some orders were best followed first and questioned after; "freeze" or "don't move" was about on par with "duck" or "look out" when it came to the most important commands to heed at a second's notice.

It was just the penthouse. I didn't hear any ominous beeping or the cocking of a weapon. Maybe I should reevaluate my life when I _expected_ to hear those sounds in _any_ context. "Is something wrong?" I forced my voice level and asked, eyes wide open as I stared at the pillow Neal had formerly used.

"No," he promised, voice gentling. "I just want you to stay still."

I huffed, but remained immobile. I was half-curled under the thick duvet, but quickly chilling into an ice pop without my smartass bed warmer. The night had been kind to me and I'd slept dreamlessly, but going off of the light that was being cast in soft curves and reflections onto the sheets before me, I hadn't slept entirely through to the next alarm. Then it took me another few seconds to realize that I shouldn't have even been in Neal's bed to begin with, until finally I remembered being unable to keep my eyes open after being invited in for coffee. We'd sat in the living room and discussed the merits of laws against graffiti/street art (he prefers the latter term) for long enough for me to get too tired to gather the motivation to get up.

When I strained my eyes to look through the thin strands of hair that were in the way, I could see Neal's legs and part of a chair further into the bedroom alcove. One was crossed over the other and a notebook or something was on his knee. Taking a deep sigh, I relaxed my shoulders and then lazily checked out the bed. It was chilly, so Neal had probably been awake for some time already, but the tightness of the blankets around my shoulders suggested he'd had the consideration to tuck me in after getting up.

He forgot about my feet.

"You can go back to sleep," he suggested.

I huffed again to show my discontent. "That's not at all concerning," I muttered, muffled by the pillow my face was shoved against. Working to speak clearly without moving, I raised my voice. "What are you up to?"

"Nothing illegal, I promise," he swore distractedly, his heart not in it.

My teeth pinched my tongue. I had to actively think about not moving to keep from drawing my legs up. I couldn't feel my toes. "If it's not illegal, why don't you tell me?"

"Do you need anything?" He asked with an exasperated sigh, changing the topic poorly.

Although, he _had_ asked… "I'm cold," I announced, expectantly waiting on him to do something about it. True to his implied offer, Neal moved his notebook off of his lap, stood up, placed it on the chair, and took slow, long strides to the air conditioning unit. Even after his legs had left my range of sight, I heard a few beeps of the machine as he turned it down, and then his soft footsteps as he came back. "What time is it?"

Instead of sitting down immediately, Neal stopped at the foot of the bed and pulled at the blankets, painstakingly covering my feet without changing how they laid across my shoulders. I frowned intently at the bed. I hadn't exactly asked for the TLC, but I was too spoiled of a person to complain about it.

"Four forty," he answered, focused on making me comfortable. He pressed hard enough for me to feel his hand stroking down the back of my leg, then patted my ankle and returned to his chair, taking up his book and sitting back down. He resumed his pose and brought the book up to his knee again. "We've got time."

The next silence was punctuated with a slight, soft scratching, like graphite being drawn across paper. The sounds lasted longer than simple short lines to make up letters or numbers. My eyes slid shut of their own accord but my brain was still working too quickly to fall right back to sleep. Neal didn't say anything else, concentrating on his project – whatever that was. I still didn't get why I wasn't allowed to move if he was just drawing.

 _Now wait just a minute…_

"Are you drawing me?"

"Well, you _are_ a French girl," he flippantly redirected, not confirming or denying.

I sighed and took his facetious answer as affirmation. Personally, I didn't care either way, as long as it stayed out of the office and away from any prying eyes that didn't need to be seeing it. It just seemed kind of weird to be the subject of such scrutiny, especially the admiring kind. He'd have to be at least a little bit appreciative of staring at me for long periods of time if he was willing to put the effort into copying the woman tangled in linens into his notebook.

On that note, it was strange to be as active as a statue and still be conscious. At least seventy percent of me wanted to sit up and fix my hair. Strands either hung in front of my face or stuck to my cheek, and I could feel it snarled and messy under my head. I wanted to rub some color back into my cheeks and fix the awkward placement of my clothes where my pants had gotten twisted and my bra was pushed up just far enough to feel wrong. It felt like Neal had stripped me of my jacket and shoes, but deemed the rest of my outfit fine to sleep in.

It was another struggle not to succumb to the impulsive urge to hide my face further into the pillows. "Sorry for passing out on you," I apologized meekly, keeping my eyes shut and willing the blood out of my face. "You could've just left me on the couch."

Sleeping in his bed without doing anything felt somehow more intimate than normal… maybe because he didn't really get anything out of it, just gave up some of his personal space so I would be more comfortable. There was a thing about sleeping in someone else's bed, and most of the time it wasn't a _bad_ thing, but it marked trust and security when it wasn't done purely out of convenience or reciprocation.

His pencil didn't pause, though his words were slower in coming. I felt privileged, in a way, to be someone whom he'd slow down around. The professional actor was calm and concentrated on something other than how he came off or how quickly he responded, not analyzing everything, not looking for an exit, not double-checking what was spoken for anything subtle or between the lines. If I had lived his life, I wasn't sure I'd ever feel safe letting my guard down again, especially not after four years in prison. The idea that he trusted me not to take advantage of that trust was heartwarming.

"And passed up a night with my cuddly, protective teddy bear?" He was only half-joking.

"Roar," I monotonously mumbled.

He chuckled and his pencil stopped. I kept my eyes closed, not wanting to deal with the awkwardness of opening my eyes and having to acknowledge him watching me. Eventually it started up again, but when it had, my attention had long since drifted until I no longer had the energy, nor the willpower, to keep myself awake.


	2. Sketches - Caricature

_**Sketches - Caricature**_

 **Summary: McKenna always knew Neal was a hell of an artist, but it had somehow never occurred to her that he might have a sketchbook.**

 **Timeframe: Set during chapter twenty-five of Lie a Little Better.**

After wishing him a good night and a restful sleep, I stayed in my parked car and watched Neal climb with dignity up the stairs of June's front porch. Remaining in the drive, I waited until he let himself in with a copy of her key, just to be sure that he got all the way home safely.

I rubbed my face when the door closed. As much as I enjoyed waking up to Neal's company, softened in the morning light, I couldn't spend every night over with him, nor did I really want to. I had only just admitted to Neal that I wanted his romantic attention, and that was a pretty big leap for me. I enjoyed nights in with Katie just as much, since she was the center of my universe, and I still needed personal time. I couldn't just go straight from being a lonely FBI agent to someone who was constantly cohabitating with someone else. Kate and I had a large house, for two New Yorkers, and suddenly crushing me with someone else in a smaller space with one bedroom and one bathroom would drive me insane.

Manhattan traffic wasn't as busy as it usually was. I made it home about five minutes sooner than I had thought I would, and my car sat on the street for a moment while I just slouched down over the steering wheel and groaned. This was just one thing after another. We weren't going to have very much time before Keller did something to strike again, and when that happened… well, I wasn't looking forward to it. Someone had died already. If Neal didn't get the information out of his broker, then where would we turn next?

It still seemed unreal that Matthew Keller could be on my radar. I shook my head and let down my hair. Katie didn't need to know the sordid details on this one. The less she knew, the better – I hated to imagine her sitting down to Google Keller's name and being faced with the fear that I was starting to go after my former brand of criminals. The less she and Keller knew about each other, the better, as far as I was concerned.

"He'll get back to me in a few hours," I told myself, trying not to get too worked up about the case. If I kept my blood pressure low, I'd be far less stressed and far less likely to consume copious amounts of coffee. Neal was just going to talk to someone, and I'd hear from him soon. He'd be fine.

Feeling my nerves calmed, I arched my spine, pressing my upper back against the seat cushion. I swept my car quickly, checking out the street through the windows. Nothing unusual, no one who didn't belong near my home. When I went to pick up my phone from one of the cup holders, I saw a dull shadow on the carpeting beneath the passenger's seat. Scowling, I decided that the odds of it being something not nice were pretty slim, and I worked my hand underneath the front to grab at the corner and pull it forward. I pushed it against the door, lifted the edge, and picked it up.

It was just a plain book bound in brown faux leather. I turned it over. The paper inside was the brightest, purest white I had ever seen in a book. I looked at the spine, but there were no markings on it. No writing, no drawing, and no colors. There was absolutely nothing visible to my eyes that indicated what it was for.

"Well, odds are, it's nothing poisonous." I said aloud to myself in the fading light of my car. I reached up over my head on my right side and turned on one of the two vanity lights between the front seats. "But if it is, then a venomous book is a pretty damn mysterious cause of death. Sign me up."

Sarcastically, I opened it. The faux leather bent easily, creased along the binding where it opened. The very first page was completely blank. There weren't eraser marks, it had just been left untouched. The paper was un-ruled and had no margins. I blinked at the anticlimactic beginning and turned it to the next page. If I could see handwriting, then I could probably determine who it belonged to out of the few people who hitches rides with me.

The second page in didn't have handwriting, but it stole away any doubt that the book belonged to anyone but Neal. _Oh, wow…_ Thin pencil lines were scratched out with feathery touches, and darker graphite smudges and charcoal shading were used to make the drawing pop out into life with astonishing detail. It made any attempt at art that I'd ever created look like scratch marks on a blackboard. What it was of went over my head for a moment, until I turned it around to look at the book horizontally and held it to the side and under the vanity light. Then I recognized it as the view from June's penthouse window, drawn from the inside, possibly from the dining table.

No wonder I hadn't recognized the kind of book it was. It was a sketchbook – and a high-quality one at that, not one I'd find in the Walmart shelves. Neal had probably ordered it online. I looked at the next sketch on the third page.

Each drawing looked incredible. Some were so incredibly realistic that I almost thought I could slip on 3D glasses and watch them pop from the page, or see them move if I tilted the book slowly enough. Others were made faster, with a few eraser marks as he corrected his lines or angles, done into caricatures or cartoony styles. The artwork was magnificent – and I recognized none of it as copyrighted work, but almost all of it as familiar locations and people. Derek and Diana featured in a few. Katie was in several. June and different rooms in her manors filled up entire pages in landscape formats, and a few even documented the unremarkable laziness of her pet pug. Unsurprisingly, there were more than a few drawings of Moreau, and, much more shocking, there were a lot of me.

Neal poured his heart and soul into these original pieces, which made it hard to just close up and look away. It felt like I was intruding on something private and personal, but I also thought I was learning more about how he thought than he ever would have told me with his words. I glanced up as if I was going to get in trouble, then decided I'd just look at a few before going inside. The book had probably fallen out of his bag during the ride to June's, and I'd return it to him tomorrow.

The first portion of the sketchbook was… dismaying. The most dreamlike thing he'd created was a profile of Kate Moreau, sitting with her feet over a pier and with a bottle of Bordeaux in front of her legs. Her hair was dark, detailed, and thick. He must've put over an hour into making her hair seem so lifelike. It curled and waved in graceful strands. Her hair wasn't shaded – it was all drawn, every single tendril. She had a soft smile on her slightly-rounded cheeks, her eyes cast down to her bare feet dipped in the water. So that was how Neal saw her? Innocent and breathtaking? I had very little patience for his sister, but even I stopped and admired the page, careful not to touch any of the lead, wary of the natural oils on my skin.

The rest of that first section wasn't too thick, but it was enough for the drawings to have occupied a large chunk of his free time. Some were set in the WCCD, but most were caricature drawings of agents. A disturbing theme in several seemed to be his anklet – or, as he depicted it, his collar. In one sketch, which was anything _but_ subtle, a quickly-drawn image of someone I recognized as myself was holding a dog's leash, which connected to the anklet around the cartoon artist's leg.

My stomach turned uneasily and I moved forward quickly. He'd never led me to think that the power balance – or lack thereof – had bothered him so much, but obviously, he'd left a few things out.

As I leafed through, however, the passage of time became evident. Before long, the satirical depictions of me subsided. I found a beautiful drawing of me, standing on air. There wasn't a landscape or a background behind me – I was just wearing the dress that Ghovat had tried to use to smuggle in a microchip. My hair was curled into ringlets, my face was healthily glowing, and my eyes looked… soft, I decided, was the right word. Some more after that was a quick, rough outline of a book with a wide hole in the front cover (the Book of Hours), and from that point, the drawings of me began looking far less dreamlike and more like everyday scenes.

Diana, sipping coffee with her eyes lit by the computer in front of her. Derek and I playfully fighting over who got to play with the stress ball that I'd nicked from Neal, who'd nicked it from Diana. More than either of my teammates, Neal seemed to enjoy reflecting on Katie and her role in his life. When I came to a picture of Katie sitting with her feet in a fountain, I had to do a double-take and look closer. She was drawn in the same (or at least, a very similar) mood as he'd drawn Kate Moreau. My eyes softened. Whether he would say it or not, he thought of Katie as someone sweet and kind to protect, the same way he insisted Moreau was innocent and needed his help.

I stopped when I came to one of Peter and me. His arresting officers, side-by-side, both of us leaning over a desk and looking at some paper or document. Both of us looked delighted, excited and enraptured with our job. I could easily accept that that was drawn from memory. Peter and I seemed to have forgotten about personal space, but given my tactility and his friendliness and our affinities for getting absorbed with our work, it was entirely possible that neither of us had noticed when it happened.

More than halfway through the book, I made a startled noise. One of the random pages I'd carefully turned to was an elaborate sketch of me, lying in Neal's bed, with a blanket wrapped around me and my hair tangled. My face was nuzzled into my crossed arms and his pillows, and I looked so peaceful as I rested… sunlight from the skylight played with the lighting, and the reflection on my hair made it shine like I had a halo. More than anything else, I could read the love that Neal had put into this one – love for creation of beauty and art, love for the serenity of the scene of a lover sleeping in one's bed.

But that had to be all it was – an aesthetic appreciation.

I closed the book, taking more care with it than I did with the majority of my own possessions, and stroked my hand down the front. While I questioned why I'd never seen Neal with it, I could answer it myself with the very reason I'd closed it – the art was a reflection of his emotions in a way that verbal expression couldn't measure up to.

For the most part, I liked what the expression of his feelings suggested.


	3. Sketches - Portrait

_**Sketches - Portrait**_

 **Summary: McKenna always knew Neal was a hell of an artist, but it had somehow never occurred to her that he might have a sketchbook.**

 **Timeframe: Set during chapter twenty-five of "Lie a Little Better."**

I arrived before Neal, but hung out in the lobby until he got from the subway station to the bureau. Giving him a small slap on the arm, pretending I hadn't seen him since he left the office a day earlier, I suggested that he come with me up to the WCCD and we could compare notes on Keller. Neal put his phone away and led the way to the elevators.

We stepped into one of the two at this part of the building. I waited for the door to close. We had over twenty floors to climb, so the ride usually took a couple of minutes. Given the contents, I wanted to keep Neal's sketchbook a secret from other agents. Diana probably wouldn't be thrilled that he was drawing her, no matter what his intentions were, and Derek probably would've razzed him about it, which I wanted to avoid. If Neal wanted his pastime to be public knowledge, he would've been seen drawing in it in public.

Neal looked up to watch the elevator as the numbers on the display rose, climbing from the ground level up towards the white-collar division. I reached into my messenger bag, pushing my laptop to occupy the space on the other side, and took out the leather-bound sketchbook, holding it around the binding to give to him.

"I found this in my van after I got home." I turned to give it to him and Neal looked at me when he heard my voice. When I held it out to him, he glanced down impulsively, but he didn't really care what I'd found until he saw and recognized it.

Neal took it quickly, bringing up a hand underneath it to take it out of my hands. There was chagrin in his motions, but he covered it up in his expression with relief and appreciation. He tilted it so the front was angled towards his body and cradled the underside closely.

"I'm assuming it's yours, since Katie and I can't draw worth a damn," I remarked casually, slipping in that I knew what was inside. I didn't want it to be a shock if it ever came out in another context; this was innocent enough and he deserved to know that someone else had seen. Besides, that didn't say I'd opened it and looked through it for a while before closing it. It just said that I'd opened it, which I couldn't be faulted for. How could I have known whose it was if I hadn't?

"Oh, yeah…" Neal ran his fingers gingerly along the binding as if feeling to make sure that it hadn't been damaged, absently touching the faux leather affectionately. It reminded me of the way Kate held a little stuffed bear that her older brother had given her. "I thought I'd just left it here." He gave me a small smile. It didn't look insincere, but he appeared distracted. "Thanks."

His reaction wasn't negative. Taking it as a good sign, I pushed gently to see how much I could get out of him. While I didn't want to enquire about the emotions expressed inside, I still wanted to know why it was a secret that it existed. "How come I've never seen you with it before?" I asked, locking my hands behind my back.

Neal's eyes had been fixed on the sketchbook. Now they snapped up to me, guarded and wary. "You've never asked," he shrugged.

 _Well, that's not a great reaction._ Because my persistence was probably going to be the thing that got me killed one day, I didn't take the hint. "It didn't occur to me that I should," I responded logically. I'd never seen it because I never asked – that was a loop. Of course I hadn't asked; I'd never seen it. Neal drew up his shoulders and turned his back to the back of the elevator, turning slightly away from me.

 _Okay, so that didn't work._

I reached for his side and brushed his upper arm with the tips of my fingers. "Hey, you're talented," I complimented genuinely, frowning slightly with apology. "I'm not trying to criticize. It's just that, with how much time you've put into it, I would've thought I'd have seen it sometime." We spent a lot of time together. It was a reasonable assumption.

"It wasn't a secret. I just don't flash my own stuff around." Neal remained facing away from me defensively. "There's nothing to gain." He held his sketchbook a little more possessively.

"Except attention," I pointed out, cocking my head to him. "Which you love."

Neal swallowed and looked at me to his right. "Maybe this is close enough to not want to exploit," he quietly and seriously answered, cradling the book gently with his careful hands. My eyes drifted down to it again. His hold on it was more telling than his tone.

 _Ah._ I bit my lip and held up my hands in surrender. So I'd found his limit to what he was and wasn't willing to take advantage of. His art was private, and he fully intended for it to remain that way. I didn't have anything that I treated as an extension of my heart. My feelings were raw, not channeled. Neal expressed himself through his drawings and then protected his art. I expressed myself without a conduit – when I had something powerful that needed to be felt, I said something, or I did something. I didn't write it down or play it through an instrument.

His way was probably healthier, since I wasn't willing to say or do things until I felt like I was dying from holding them back. The only emotions I really expressed freely were happiness and anger.

"Okay," I said softly, putting my hands down slowly. I was trying to be amicable. Neal's my friend, and respecting his privacy despite my curiosity is imperative for a good relationship. The only times my position as his handler would supersede that was if I believed he was up to something illegal. "Okay, I'm sorry. You're entitled to your own, law-abiding privacy."

The artist relaxed, evening his shoulders and ducking his head down. Tension gradually fled from his jaw and arms. I put my hands in my pockets and stared up at the display over the elevator's controls. We still had a way to go. _If this building ever goes all "Ghost in the Machine" on us, these elevators are going to really backfire._

Soft, papery rustling made me look over, attention piqued. Neal had his head down and was opening up his sketchbook. Forcing myself to avert my eyes, I pretended to be absolutely enamored with the glowing red digits telling us which floor we were passing.

The pages continued to move until they stopped. "Besides," Neal asked, voice down and uncharacteristically open. "How would I explain this?"

He turned the sketchbook towards me. I looked to see what he was trying to ask about and saw the portrayal of myself, sleeping soundly amongst his linens, fabric of my shirt tightened and gathered on my upper back and the swell of my breast just visible underneath my arm, one knee bent and hiked up further on the bed.

"Loneliness," I wittily answered while Neal changed the page.

I extended my own invitation as Neal slowly thumbed through more, pads of his fingers handling only the edges of the pages. I took a small step up to his side to look closer, and he tilted his grasp so that I could see the images easier. I supposed acknowledging that it was personal had proven that I respected his personal belongings.

I stopped him when he paused at another, a fond smile growing on his face, curving his lips subtly. "Why put that on paper, though?" I asked, puzzled. It was of Katie and I, but both of us had clearly just woken up without coffee. Our hair was messy and snarled, we were in our pajamas, and I looked as exhausted as a human zombie. I'd have hated to have a picture of myself like that; why would Neal put the effort into creating copies by hand?

Neal pursed his lips slightly before he tried to explain. Then he stopped, darted his tongue out briefly, and scraped his teeth down his bottom lip before he found the words. "You don't just stop _existing_ behind closed doors," he tried to express, already wiggling his fingernail between the pages to flip them to a new sketch. "This sleepy version's just as much of you as this one."

He turned a few at once and left it on another, featuring myself and Diana. There was a railing across my stomach and I was leaning over it to speak to Diana, whose dark, silky hair and slender body gave away her identity, regardless of that she was facing away from the view. I was smiling, grinning at her, a cup of coffee in one hand and the other along the top of the mezzanine rail. I was well-dressed and composed and happily engaged. I much preferred photos to be taken while I looked like that.

Neal closed his book. I didn't try to stop him or ask to see more.

My boyfriend cleared his throat. "You and Katie are pretty much my only friends to draw," he admitted. I half-expected for his cheeks to blush pink, but he seemed earnest, not embarrassed, and his coloring remained normal. "Mozzie would rather stay off-record and I don't know anyone else, other than Kate, well enough to do this." He gestured with his right hand to the book he securely carried in his left. "I want to remember all of you, not just the way you present yourself in public."

 _Wow._ I'd heard prettier words, but scarcely encountered a kinder sentiment. Neal didn't just want the façades that his friends put out to the world, the way they wanted to be seen. He didn't want to capture them merely in the way he saw them, either. He wanted to be able to look back and reflect on them for who they were throughout the time he knew them. He wanted our candid personalities, not just a staged photo. The authenticity, the honesty, of an intimate moment was worth more to him than a premeditated photograph of delighted friends in expensive clothing with organized smiles.

I felt even worse for looking through them without his permission the night before. "I wasn't expecting such a sweet answer," I told him, reaching to scratch at the back of my neck.

Neal held his sketchbook closer to his stomach as the elevator dinged, hiding it from the immediate sight of someone who watched us enter the division. "You asked, I shared." He made it sound so simple when it felt much more complex. "These are more personal than some company bonds." _So I don't want to air them to anyone nearby,_ he implied.

And yet he still shared them with me. I was surprised and humbled.

"Thank you," I said softly, touching his elbow through his sleeve and escorting him out of the elevator with a gentle hold.


End file.
